Sometimes I am struck by the surreal nature of doing these lessons. I feel like I’m a character in a film and all the audience can clearly see what is happening but for some reason my delusion is so profound that I am totally oblivious to the truth. I often feel as if that is what being in this world is – a venture into amnesia; like we decided we didn’t want to know the truth of who we really are and so God said, “Sure, go on your quest. Have fun, go play. Don’t scare yourself too much. I’ll keep the light on for you. Your place is secure.” Then off we went on this search for something better than God could give us; except there is nothing better. Atonement is bliss. Who we really are is so magnificent that no earthly experience could come close.

So often I feel like I’m peeking behind the veil; like I’m just busy living my life and then these moments come and I realize I’m not the puny, little helpless victim I duped myself into thinking that I was.

I was watching the TV show Heartbeat, and in last week’s show, Melissa George’s character Alex posed the question, “what was the scariest part for you during The Wizard of Oz?” For her, it wasn’t the witch or the flying monkeys but the part when the Wizard is revealed to be just a man. Now, I’m not suggesting that God is “just a man,” but I do think that it terrifies us to look behind the curtain and it is because we’ve made up this whole separate identity apart from who we really are, and the thought of losing that is frightful.

We want to be in charge of the Kingdom. We want our own individual identities, or at least our egos do.

In last night’s group meeting, for whatever reason, we reread the section we’d ended with the week before, section B from The Lessons of Love: To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, which says, “What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe you are. If the center of the thought system is true, only truth extends from it. But if a lie is at its center, only deception proceeds from it.”

The main “problem” is we forget who we are, thus the need for today’s lesson: I will accept Atonement for myself. It is a proclamation of truth: we are as God created us, not the pathetic version our egos made up.

Lesson 139

I will accept Atonement for myself.

Here is the end of choice. For here we come to a decision to accept ourselves as God created us. And what is choice except uncertainty of what we are? There is no doubt that is not rooted here. There is no question but reflects this one. There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question, “What am I?”

Yet who could ask this question except one who has refused to recognize himself? Only refusal to accept yourself could make the question seem to be sincere. The only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is what it is. From this one point of certainty, it looks on other things as certain as itself.

Uncertainty about what you must be is self-deception on a scale so vast, its magnitude can hardly be conceived. To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead. For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead? Who is the doubter? What is it he doubts? Whom does he question? Who can answer him?

He merely states that he is not himself, and therefore, being something else, becomes a questioner of what that something is. Yet he could never be alive at all unless he knew the answer. If he asks as if he does not know, it merely shows he does not want to be the thing he is. He has accepted it because he lives; has judged against it and denied its worth, and has decided that he does not know the only certainty by which he lives.

Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him. It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth. You are yourself. There is no doubt of this. And yet you doubt it. But you do not ask what part of you can really doubt yourself. It cannot really be a part of you that asks this question. For it asks of one who knows the answer. Were it part of you, then certainty would be impossible.

Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself, and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this mean except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true?

Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. And they will come again until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are.

Only acceptance can be asked of you, for what you are is certain. It is set forever in the holy Mind of God, and in your own. It is so far beyond all doubt and question that to ask what it must be is all the proof you need to show that you believe the contradiction that you know not what you cannot fail to know. Is this a question, or a statement which denies itself in statement? Let us not allow our holy minds to occupy themselves with senseless musings such as this.

We have a mission here. We did not come to reinforce the madness that we once believed in. Let us not forget the goal that we accepted. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain. What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be, along with us. Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them, that they may know that they are part of you, and you of them.

This does Atonement teach, and demonstrates the Oneness of God’s Son is unassailed by his belief he knows not what he is. Today accept Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of God. It is but this that we are asked to do. It is but this that we will do today.

Five minutes in the morning and at night we will devote to dedicate our minds to our assignment for today. We start with this review of what our mission is:

I will accept Atonement for myself,For I remain as God created me.

We have not lost the knowledge that God gave to us when He created us like Him. We can remember it for everyone, for in creation are all minds as one. And in our memory is the recall how dear our brothers are to us in truth, how much a part of us is every mind, how faithful they have really been to us, and how our Father’s Love contains them all.

In thanks for all creation, in the Name of its Creator and His Oneness with all aspects of creation, we repeat our dedication to our cause today each hour, as we lay aside all thoughts that would distract us from our holy aim. For several minutes let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around the holy Son of God. And learn the fragile nature of the chains that seem to keep the knowledge of yourself apart from your awareness, as you say:

“Here is the end of choice.” I rather like that, even though I am a person who likes things open-ended. Decisions require a determination that doesn’t allow for things to fall apart. It doesn’t mean things can’t go “wrong” in accordance to the ego’s preferences, but it does mean that whatever is happening contains within it the seeds of whatever needs to happen for maximal return, for the growth of the soul.

I don’t about you, but sometimes I’m not particularly happy with soul growth. I don’t always want to step up to the plate and find out what I’m worth.

It was part of last night’s discussion because, well, we all think we want to be happy and positive 24/7, but if that were true, then why, oh why, do we create drama? Why, oh why, do things that are uncomfortable and hard and that some part of us doesn’t want to face?

My answer is that because we know we are bigger and better than our little egos would have us be. My answer is that we are evolving and it’s sometimes painful.

It’s not that God wants us to suffer, it’s that we resist. We are learning how to surrender. We are learning how to accept the Atonement for ourselves.

That requires giving up judging (and most of us love to judge – we love to dish and slander and strut our superiority). Fortunately, our being off-track doesn’t stop the “endless Love of God.”

So, today, as I settle into the drama and craziness that assails the world of real estate where hopes and fears get bundled together into one expensive package in which we pin the solutions to our problems, I will repeat to myself: I will accept Atonement for myself,For I remain as God created me.

For whether or not I get my house cannot determine my worth or my happiness. It cannot and will not change the truth of who I am.

In the meantime, being human means I will sometimes disappoint both myself and others. Things will not always go the way I think they should. But “the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself.” But I will accept Atonement for myself and try to remember that when I do not share a thought system, I weaken it.